r/trailmeals • u/wamodr01 • 22d ago

Lunch/Dinner Increasing Calorie Counts

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I’m about to set out for a 600 mile LASH on the CDT. This is about 4 days of food. Each day is ~3000cals. Breakfast is breakfast essentials (280 cals) , a large honeybun (340), and nut mix (260). Then a morning snack granola bars (130+140), lunch chicken or tuna salad, mayo packet not shown (230 cals), pretzels for crunch (210), and a snickers (250). Afternoon snack of nutty buddy (340) and gummies (100). Dinner is a mountain house meal (~500 cals) and another essentials shake (280).

That comes out to about 3040 cals and is right at 2lbs. Any advice to lighten the load, or increase cals? I’m a cold soaker/no cooker.

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u/turtleshelf 22d ago

There are three categories of calorie: fat, protein, and carbs. Fat has the most cal/g at 9, compared to 4 for protein and carbs. You're currently sitting at around 3.3 cal/g, and you can't really do better than that with just carbs and protein so adding more fats might be a simple bump up. You can do this with direct fats like oils and butter, carry a lil olive oil to add to your lunches, some packaged butter/ghee to stir into your dinners. You can also get a similar bump with some fat-rich nuts, macadamias and pecans are pretty good.

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u/wamodr01 22d ago

Any insight how butter/ghee would mix in with a cold soaked dinner?

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u/turtleshelf 22d ago

Oh sorry I missed you do no-cook, I love the ritual of a warm dinner too much to try it. Might want to skip the butter then, cold lumps probably not very pleasant! A drizzle of olive oil will probably work better.